


make it worth it

by peradi



Series: your name is hope schlottman [1]
Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Abortion, F/F, F/M, Fix It Fic, Flashbacks, Fluff, Lesbians, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Minor Character, PTSD, Rape Recovery, Second Person, Strange fluff, anachronistic order, gay nerds, good girls do want they want, hurt and comfort (of a sort), kilgrave is his own warning, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-05 08:51:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5369219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You are Hope Schlottman. You survive. </p><p>(this is the easy part. The hard part comes after: the living)</p>
            </blockquote>





	make it worth it

**Author's Note:**

> this was a strange thing to write. i wanted to write a fic where she got her happy ending, only she doesn't really in this -- call it an ending? something approaching hope?  
> i don't know. it's deliberately messy style-wise -- she's not the most stable of girls -- so please do let me know what you think of it.
> 
> the title is from 'black dahlia' by angel haze which is the intended backing track to this fic.

You are Hope Schlottman. You sit in a flat that is not your own, and you stare at the wall, and the wall isn't white -- it's sort of an off cream, bit stained at the bottom -- and you slide your gaze up, up, up to a ceiling the exact hue of a moody sky, webs clustered in the corners, spiders there; dead spiders, sad little husks that quiver in the draught, legs spindly and useless and empty, and you stand, unfolding like a creaky old deckchair, and reach up. Snag the webs on the points of your fingers, they're thick with dust, holding it close as a lover, and as you tug the dust scatters down in a slow rain and this place needs a clean-up.

Yes. You rummage through the cupboards. 

And that, of course, is when your landlady walks in and she says, "Hope?" in a tone sharp and bright with concern because scars still stand livid on your throat and Kilgrave is dead and gone and buried; but he lingers under your nails like gravedirt, and of course she's worried for you. 

That's something new. Someone worrying for you. Someone thinking that you're worth worrying for. 

"I'm fine," you say. 

You're lying. She can taste it: her face creases up, lips pulled tight in a not-smile, head on one side. 

For all that darkness around her and in her, she's got a heart big enough to hold the world. 

Not that she'd say it. 

Not that she'd ever say it. 

 

\--

 

You are Hope Schlottman, and you are twelve years old.

You have the longest legs of anyone in your class, long stretches of gold, and they carry you far and fast, and when you jump the ground rolls under you and for a moment the sky swings down to brush against your cheeks -- then thud on the earth, hard landing, jarring landing, knees creaking -- joints ow ow ow not used to this whole thing, this jumping on hard summer ground.

"Save it for the track," sings out Mrs Foster. She is smiling. Everyone smiles on a day like today. The summer sun is high, and the blue sky is broken up with feather white clouds and when you were little -- really little, like four -- your Nana told you that clouds were angel wings shedding, and your Grandma said that it was nonsense, that clouds were actually God plucking His geese for the dinner table.

Either way. Clouds are, to you, ever associated with birds and feathers and freedom. The sky is limitless. You are limitless. You are twelve years old, and summer gapes open before you like the best kind of road.

Long legs, tiny feet, and the agility of a doe.

You jump again, higher this time, muscles bunching and releasing; your skin is electric with sweat and this time when you land you bend your knees, the impact soaked up and --

 

\--

 

You are Hope Schlottman. You are twenty years old.

You have been jumping for six hours. You counted. You count by jumps. One jump is five seconds. You cannot jump very high, not anymore, and your joints sing with agony and sweat is thick under your arms and on your upper lip and you cannot lick it away because you did once and Kilgrave said it was disgusting and forbade you from ever doing it again.

"Please," you say. "Please let me stop."

"Jessica was better," says Kilgrave. That's the backdrop to everything you do. Jessica was better. Jessica was stronger. Faster. Prettier. Gave better head, looked better in black. Jessica. Jessica. Jessica. Your heart is hard and desperate, a limping slanting beat against your ribs, and every thump is a syllable of that name.

You'd hate her, if you could muster the energy.

" _Please_ ," you say.

"Jump _higher_ ," says Kilgrave.

There is no sky. You are not twelve.

You gather the lingering silver threads of your energy and you _jump_.

 

\--

 

This is what it is to be under Kilgrave's control.

It is rape.

 

\--

 

She wants something less visceral.

The lawyer, that is. Jeri. Hogarth, Jessica Jones calls her. You wish that you could call her Hogarth. You like how the syllables sound. Sharp. Staccato. Between the teeth and the tongue, spat out like venom. Yes. That is a name to be feared. To be reckoned with. A satirist, wasn't he? Once upon a time you studied history. English history. Now you can't bear the thought of a nation of people speaking with his voice.

(You are Hope Schlottman. You are in prison. Your legs are elastic and ruined from lack of use.)

"How did it feel?" she says.

You were, once, thirteen. You were obliging. Kind. Sweet. You had a spaniel called Dexter, and you were just like him, both lolloping athletes with smiling eyes.

You think of radio interviews gone wrong, that voice insidious on airwaves; you think of airwaves, how they slide inside your head -- inside -- and how he will always be there. Rooted within you.

"Like rape," you say, again.

She doesn't understand. How could she?

 

\--

 

They understand her.

The prisoners, that is. They believe her. Oh, of course they believe her -- they are women from the lowest strata of Hell's Kitchen; they see what the upper echelons do not, or do not want to see. They are those who had their homes standing in ruins post the alien-thing. They are those who shoot up, and it is the junkies who understand her best. The sense of something alien and pressing and hungry.

Kilgrave is a drug. Yes. That's not a bad comparison.

This is what you do in prison. You braid your hair, and unbraid it. You braid it again.

You do not talk to the guards. They are hard-faced and they do not believe you. Rape? and you see it, the skepticism high in eyes and on cheekbones.

You studied history, once. Women sent to the gallows would plead their bellies. Claim that you cannot kill them and the babe, not an innocent, and sometimes the guards -- all male, in those days -- would take

( _old fashioned speak for fuck)_

the female inmates and claim they asked for it.

How little things change

How much things change.

 

\--

 

You do not bleed.

It is your time, and you do not bleed, and you hook your fingers up inside yourself -- pushing in deep, pressing against the walls of your vagina, and you want to reach right up inside yourself and tear the thing out.

There is no thing. There _cannot_ be a thing.

(i cannot be --)

(i was on the pill --)

(i always --)

Except. He'd binned your pills. He never used condoms, even when you begged; he'd laugh, knock your knees open and kiss you, breathing _let me_ and _beg me_ and your protests became urgent slutty mewls.

(You are Hope Schlottman. You were raped.)

(His name is Killgrave. He does not think he is a rapist, because you asked him to fuck you. Because he sees the world how he wants it. Because he thinks if he tells the world: this is so it will believe him.)

 

\--

 

You remember.

When you were first taken, you looked for the rules to learn.

You are -- were -- Hope Schlottman, athlete and student and all round American girl and you had (have?) hair of gold and your family loved you and loved each other and you have (had?) parents who love you and they are (were) sweet and good to each other. And you learned that people are, ultimately, good and that if they do not like you or they mistreat you then you can win them around.

And you think: Kilgrave is not evil, no one is, there are rules I must follow and then he will not hurt me.

You think this because you are (were?) Hope. You think this because you were raised to see the world as fair. Because you thought that everyone -- no matter how dark -- lived by the same contract, the same basic laws: if I do this, you will do this.

Kilgrave is erratic. Kilgrave is -- one moment -- beautiful yes and letting her phone her mother on her birthday (you're twenty one, you can legally drink, oh the joy of it) and then, the next, fast as changing spring weather he's teeth in your earlobe, crooning in your ear --

_Bend it over and take me in your arse. Hate it. Let me do it._

 

\--

 

Jessica Jones is beautiful, but not because of her eyes or hair (like night, Kilgrave used to say, like ebony) but because she's got a pill in her hand and endless

_(limitless? you are hope schlottman and twelve and the world is endless before you)_

sorrow in her eyes, and yes it is beauty but you also hate her because if she had killed him, left him torn open and red and glistening on that road, then you would be home and loved and surrounded by the love of an intact family.

 

\--

 

You bleed for eight hours, and the abhorrence slides between your thighs. Red. Red, against the white. You stare at the ceiling. Knees crooked open. Empty. 

The thing is gone, but Kilgrave is still there.

He's under your nails, like blood that will never wash away.

(out damn spot. Once upon a time you read Macbeth)

Between your teeth, the taste of iron, in your hair and in every atom of you.

You are not Jessica Jones. You are Hope, and you are twenty one.

 

\--

 

Twenty years inside sounds better than forever.

You studied history, once. Maybe you can do it again. Time inside. It doesn't sound all that bad. Inside. Four walls. A door. Guards. Female guards -- though, in your more lighthearted moments, you jest that they're only female on a technicality. One of them's got more facial hair than

_(your dad)_

Brian Blessed.

And then you remember who taught you about Brian Blessed, who hooked an arm about your shoulders and watched British eighties comedy with you, who laughed along to Blackadder and vintage Doctor Who.

( _monsters are not monstrous all the time)_

You vomit right there, straight on the ground. The girl you are joking with steps back, eyes flying wide in disgust.

You haven't been eating. It's just bile. It burns.

 

\--

 

Sometimes, you dream.

You actually prefer the dreams about Kilgrave. Waking after those to four walls and iron -- the real world becomes a comfort.

The dreams of your parents leave you weeping. Your eyes are ruined. Red and puffy. Your mouth is one big scab, because you can't stop chewing soft lipskin. You swallow it. You eat bits of yourself as you rust and flake like old iron, like scrap metal, like everything that's ever been abandoned in this hellhole of a city.

 

\--

 

He comes for you.

He comes for you, and you knew he would -- _you always knew he would._

You are not Hope Schlottman. You are nothing. You are hollow. Inside you is a howling snowscape.

You are blank whiteness. Inside you is a thread of purple. It knots about your hands. Bites into your knuckles. Does not draw blood. There is no blood to draw. It sinks into dead white flesh and in -- into you, sliding within, you do not _want_ it and there it is --

_(what is it like being under kilgrave’s control says Juni-Hogarth not so long ago. what is it like what is it like tell me)_

_(you give that answer, the same one, and her pretty face sharpens. tightens. distress in her eyes. and what else? guilt. yes guilt. guilt is there as well and why)_

_(what is it like, she asks like you’re going to say something else.)_

_(what you want to say: why do you want to know. are you going to make a deal. shall i call you mrs faust. shall i hold your hand and reassure. shall i. shall)_

_(what you say: i want the plea bargain)_

\--

 

You are whiteness. You are dead. Yes. You are dead.

All of this is happening to a dead thing. A dead thing with no name.

 

\--

 

You hate Jessica. You hate her, partly because Kilgrave tells you that you do, but also because she is not dead; she is lightning and storm and alive, alive with energy and blackness, she is roiling cloud and rain sleeting down, she is there. She is a fighter.

She could not kill him.

She could not kill him, because for all that darkness inside her she has a heart big enough to hold the world. Not that she’ll say. Not that she’ll ever say.

 

\--

 

You hate her.

But then you’re sitting there, a gauntlet of people who are not dead but may be, soon, and the shrill whiteness lifts -- for just a moment. Just long enough.

(twelve hours ago he said: you will hate her you will hate her as much as i hate her)

But that was then, and this is now, and you do not hate her because you understand.

 

 

\--

 

All this. It's not Jessica's fault. It's yours.

You are alive, and this is why she is not killing Kilgrave -- because she wants to save you. You want to shout at her -- I'm not worth it! -- you want to pluck your ribs open and show her your insides, which are blank and white and static.

Take her hand. Take the hand of this girl, this girl made of night and pain, and show her the deadness within you. Hope is gone, you want to say, Hope is dead and gone and I am ice and (frost?) and snow and (dead) and --

You want to make it all better, make it right.

And, just like that, you know how to.

It’s the first independent thought you’ve had in a long, long time.

 

\--

 

Smash the cup.

Shard of porcelain. White. Pointed. You think of Mom, her smile, her teeth white and clean and her hand on your shoulder, point out clouds: feathers, angelwings, geese. Dad. Running. Track. Fragments.

Jugular. Pain.

And red.

(red?)

Yes. Red. Pain. Pain. Lightning. A hard, ugly pain -- somehow opening you up, opening, that whiteness spilling out from you -- the sky, that dreadful winter sky, cracking open and in rushes blood. Yes: this is the image you have. You were on a white snowscape, a sky thick and white with winter ice-cloud, and Kilgrave had his claws in your dead (dead?) skin and then you plunge the shard into your throat, sinking in deep, and open --

Opens the sky.

Blood flows in. A warm slap across your face. The white, in a blinking, is scarlet. Melting. Scarlet snowmelt, slush, and you are waking, waking, waking, and the hot iron reek is everywhere; the pain is everywhere, and it doesn't have a colour. It's just a jagged flash of light that comes over, and over, until your entire world is red and light.

Last thing you see: Jess's face. Skin is snow. Hair as black as ebony.

(once upon a time --)

Then: dark.

 

\--

 

There is no light.

No pearly gates.

Your parents are not there.

 

\--

 

This is almost certainly because you are not dead.

 

\--

 

You wake up.

 

\--

 

You wake up (up?)

 

\--

 

You wake to whiteness, but it’s a different sort of whiteness. Not the white of madness. Not the white of empty-howling. Not --

(You studied history, once upon a time. You learned that in China white is the colour of death. This makes a lot of sense.)

Anyway. You wake, and you wake to pain, and to the beep-beep of a machine that you suspect is keeping you alive. You wake to a nurse, a nurse with brown skin and kind eyes. “Hiya Hope,” she says. “Gave us all quite a nasty shock.”

(us? all?)

You want to say: there is no us. There is no all. There is me.

(You are Hope Schlottman.)

(Somehow, somehow you are alive.)

 

\--

 

The nurse’s name, you learn, is Claire.

“It’s not what I wanted to happen,” you say. You’re handcuffed to your bed. There is something called suicide watch and you are very much on it. "I didn't want to die, not really. I just want it to be over."

"Hm," she says. Her hands are quick, nimble, sure. There's something reassuring about those hands. "If you didn't want to die, then why did you put a knife in your throat?"

"Was a bit of cup," you say.

"Either way. You need a therapist."

"M'fine. Where's Jess?" The ugly press of purple behind your eyes. If he is not dead, if Jessica finds out -- you think of her tearing here to save you, of her looking to exonerate you, of people lined up and dying like wolves at a hunt because of you.

All your fault. Your fault.

But then they tell you that he is dead. They say it again, and again and again and on the eighth time or so they realise that you are having a panic attack; but it’s a strange kind, because you’re staring into nothing, your face absent any colour and you see white, white, you see whiteness and that place within you that you used to go to when he had you trapped up in his tongue -- you see that place, and it is a white and limitless

(you are twelve and limitless)

snowscape with a permanent scar in the sky and that sky leaks blood and it splatters onto you, warm on your face, and you hold your (free free free) hands up and let the blood, your blood, warm you up.

It’s not a bad thing. Blood. Not really. Shows that you’re alive.

 

\--

 

You have nowhere to go. You have nowhere to go, except that you do; and that is how you end up here, in Jessica's grotty little flat, because she insists that you stay here. And so here you are, rag in hand, scrubbing at spiderwebs.

 

\--

 

This is what you do: you take your medication. You go to therapy. Your therapist is tall and grey-haired with a sharply pretty face. She frightens you, but everything frightens you so you muscle through the fear and talk. 

(The strange thing about anxiety: you are afraid, always, and this makes it easier to conquer the fear.)

(An analogy: the alarm bells sound for the smallest things. You get used to their high, sweet song.)

 

\--

 

And then one day you awake and you are not afraid. 

It's not much. It's a start. The black claws of dread skate up your spine three days later, when Jessica snaps at Trish over the amount of washing up -- Trish is houseproud, but Jessica (bizarrely) is worse, taking to domesticity like she takes to anything else: with a ferocious pride, wielding mop and sponge like weapons. She's building her life up from the roots, and she's going to make it fuck-damn perfect.

(Her words, not yours.)

Anyway. You flinch, and Jessica apologizes at once -- staccato and guilty -- and Trish combs her fingers through your hair, and you are twenty one and a little too old to be mothered and yet. And yet here you are, in a kitchen overlooking the city, under a sterling-grey sky, and the smell of pancakes permeates every corner. Your mind is no longer white: it's a riot of colour and noise and pain, and this is a good thing, for light and colour and sound means you are alive. And you are. You are alive and there is a scar at your throat, a liver-dark scar, and you have -- somehow -- gained two terrifying mothers who are barely ten years your senior. 

You wake the next day. You are not afraid. 

 

\--

 

You swear a little more now, and your hair is a little more blonde -- highlights -- and you wear a black leather jacket, and suck the end of your pen as you study, and you are still living with Jessica, only now the pair of you live with Trish. 

You're an odd triumvirate. You use that word, and Jessica rolls her eyes, mutters something about  _college_ girl and Trish rubs gentle circles on her lover's nape and the room is so thick with joy and love that you struggle to breathe. 

 

\--

 

You run into Claire Temple at a coffee shop almost a year post-Kilgrave. 

(That's still your chronology. You don't want it to be, but it is, and pretending the past did not happen helps no one. You can't carve him from your life, because that is a lie of monumental scape, and so you learn to work with the scars you have. You think of it like missing a leg. Pretending you still have a leg helps no one, so you learn to walk with crutches.)

She's immersed in a book. It's a trashy paperback, but you understand the value of space and time, and so you pick a table within her eye reach and wait to be noticed. 

It takes five minutes. Her dark eyes flicker up, snag on you, her mouth pops open. "Hope," she says, half-surprised. Her lips crook welcome. "Sit down." 

You do. The book is about cowboys. It is terrible. There are too many men in it. You agree somberly that this is true of many things, and Claire barks laughter. 

She tells you about a blind man who sleeps on her sofa more nights than not; how she finds superheroes in dumpsters, oozing blood all over the garbage; how she is determined to save this city a sliver at a time. You tell her how your Grandmother pointed at clouds and told you they were feathers. You tell her that you are starting to run again, that Jessica is a houseproud terror, that you wake afraid some days and happy others and how the scar has faded but won't vanish, not yet.

You tell her how you don't want it to. 

You say that she should come back for coffee the next week, and that you should join her. 

"Did you just invite me out on a date?" she says. 

There's red on your cheeks, and those alarm bells are shrieking, and your stomach knots and your knees are elastic with tension, and she is all but a stranger but you've spent five hours spilling your life stories to each other and the coffee congeals between you. 

"Yes," you say, "I did," because you are Hope Schlottman, you are twenty two, and you are  _alive_.


End file.
